


To Love What Is Mortal

by winter156



Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 00:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14032239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter156/pseuds/winter156
Summary: This is what a broken heart looks like:Hollow eyes and tight smiles. A turned shoulder. A missed opportunity that bleeds into pointed, painful avoidance. Tears in the dark, quiet solitude of midnight. Head pressed against a wet pillow to muffle uneven, broken breaths. A hand clutching a heaving chest, fingers desperately trying to keep a fragile heart from bleeding out between aching ribs.





	To Love What Is Mortal

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I do sort of go here now since this is more than my third little shot in. So this is a short, kind of AU thing. Basically a thought wheedled itself in my brain about Pippa not simply giving Hecate the cold shoulder at school...and this happened. I hope it's at least a little bit enjoyable.

This is what a broken heart looks like:

Hollow eyes and tight smiles. A turned shoulder. A missed opportunity that bleeds into pointed, painful avoidance. Tears in the dark, quiet solitude of midnight. Head pressed against a wet pillow to muffle uneven, broken breaths. A hand clutching a heaving chest, fingers desperately trying to keep a fragile heart from bleeding out between aching ribs.

 _It should be bloody_ —the thought flashes through Pippa’s mind without conscious effort when she pulls her hand away, exhausted and empty of tears but still full of splintered aching. _Why does it still hurt so much?_

She lets the pain radiate out from her chest and fill her stomach with lead and weigh her limbs down into the mattress.

She allows it to consume her. She feels the ache of Hecate’s absence all the way to her fingertips. And for a razor thin instant that’s suspended in the eternity of a moment of dark, heavy night, Pippa wants to let that terrible pain become hate. The want of it—the desire to wrap herself in the acrid bitterness of it—is coppery on her tongue and her magic _burns_ under her skin to _make is so_ … _just stop fighting and give in_.

Pillow damp with her tears, face stained with the traces of them, breathing still shallow from pain, eyes wide in the darkness of the night—hurting, hurting, hurting—Pippa can’t think of a good reason to keep pushing the insistent desire away.

Pippa has mourned Hecate for an endless eternity. She brings her hand back to her chest. Her fingers curl into a fist and she taps her sternum. _Enough_. She turns into her pillow and closes her eyes. She won’t cry anymore. Not for Hecate.

She’s done mourning the living.

This is what a broken heart looks like.

A hemorrhaging and open wound. Consuming loneliness. Emptiness that presses hot pinpricks of pain against every inch inside Pippa’s chest.

* * *

 “As I told Hecate…”

Pippa’s vision funnels to a point far away in her mind. She only half hears the rest of the words spilling around her in monotone cacophony. Her world narrows down to a pointed realization: Hecate had already asked to dissolve their partnership. Pippa’s heart pounds sluggishly in her chest and she hears it loudly in her ears.

“…you can find someone better next year.”

The world snaps back into focus. Pippa glares at that last sentence. There is no one better. Hecate is the best student in the whole school. Hecate is her best friend. _Except she’s not_. _Except…Hecate already checked if she could get further away in every way._

Pippa swallows around the tightness of her throat and walks out without another word.

They’re still partnered together in nearly every one of their classes.

And, they still work well together. They’re able to communicate without speaking. They’re still the best students in the school and neither wants to tarnish that reputation.

So, they adapt.

It’s awkward and painful. Because Pippa doesn’t understand why they’re broken, why they’re not trying to mend their friendship but letting it die. She wants to be as dispassionate as Hecate and ignore all the anger and resentment and hate—and love—that choke her words whenever she’s near Hecate. Pippa doesn’t know why they’re suddenly jagged pieces with edges too sharp to fit together anymore.

Civility is what saves them in the end. Hecate is nothing if not achingly, rigidly proper. And Pippa is exceptionally well bred in social manner and etiquette.

They manage.

But, they don’t talk outside of _please_ and _thank you_ and _you’re welcome_.

And, they never touch. Hecate is very careful of where her hands and body are at all times. And, Pippa, while less careful, doesn’t particularly have any desire to disrupt their quiet détente. They’re tentatively reaching a new normal and her heart doesn’t ache constantly as it did a month ago. It isn’t good, but it’s better. And Pippa doesn’t hope for anything more. The numbness that’s overtaken her is enough for now. It’s better than the ugly, open wound her heart used to be.

Pippa almost doesn’t notice when the numbness becomes hardness. All she knows is that the pain is walled away inside her now. It doesn’t hurt less—necessarily—it just hurts privately. And that allows her to pretend she’s better. It allows her to smile. It allows her to be present with other people again. It allows her to laugh with an eye always over her shoulder to see Hecate’s reaction. It allows her to take cruel pleasure in Hecate’s displeased frowns and downcast eyes.

 _Not so emotionless then_ —but Pippa’s stomach twists uncomfortably every time her thoughts veer that way. She shakes herself and always looks away. _It doesn’t matter. I don’t matter to her…why should she matter to me?_

It isn’t moving on…but it’s moving forward.

A walled, fortified heart is better than a broken one.

* * *

Of course, Pippa notices Hecate’s pale face and the sunken cheekbones that keep getting sharper and sharper. Hecate is gaunt, her eyes glassy, her intellect still sharp but lapsing.

She watches and watches and pretends the tangled knots in her stomach aren’t worry. Pippa pushes the thoughts away until Hecate almost adds too much mandrake root to their simple sleeping potion.

She grabs her and holds Hecate’s arm firmly. “Hecate—” sharp, but quiet, “—you’ll kill us.”

The first real words between them. And how fitting. And how true.

Hecate flinches away from Pippa’s touch so quickly, so forcefully that she nearly stumbles into the cauldron. The only thing that saves her is Pippa’s reflexive and unthinking grip on her arm again. She pulls Hecate upright and forgets to let go. Hecate’s face crumbles and she looks devastated. She looks how Pippa’s insides feel, shredded and bleeding. She shrugs out of Pippa’s grasp.

Fury pushes through the wall of pain inside Pippa’s chest. _How dare she—As if I’ve been the one that’s hurt her—The audacity_ —her thoughts clatter in her head and run together. She watches Hecate’s face smooth back out to impassivity.

“Just because it hurts doesn’t mean it’s brave, Hecate,” she spits out, shaking with the effort to keep her voice low. Pippa doesn’t know what she means, but it _sounds_ right in the space between them.

It makes Hecate go rigid and draw into herself. But, Pippa is tired of tiptoeing around what she wants to ask. She’s tired of feeling such a soul sucking sadness and not being able to tell anyone. She’s tired of missing Hecate when she’s right next to her. She’s tired of pretending she doesn’t care. Because she does care, so deeply it’s dangerously unwise.

“Come on.” She reaches for Hecate again. Slowly. Pippa realizes that Hecate will never reach for her. Not because she doesn’t want to, but because she doesn’t know how. The knowledge leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

Hecate looks at Pippa’s outstretched hand for several long seconds. Confused and unmoving. But, almost against her will, she reaches out to take Pippa’s hand.

The touch burns Pippa. Their magic sparks at every point their skin touches.

Pippa doesn’t let go; Hecate doesn’t either.

They don’t talk.

Pippa pulls Hecate to the dining hall and makes her sit while she grabs her some food. Hecate watches her with a frown as she places the food in front of her.

Pippa sits across from her and folds her arms across her chest. “Eat.”

Hecate’s lips twitch, almost turn up in a smile, before pressing hard into a frown. But, she picks up her fork and eats the food in front of her.

Something hard and heavy eases inside Pippa’s chest. Hate doesn’t suit her. She softens.

Hecate’s gaze meets hers. And they stare at each other, across the table, across the silence, across the pain. Hecate lowers her eyes first, light blush dusting her cheekbones, and continues eating.

Pippa wonders at the odd sensation in her belly. She wonders why she’s split her own chest open and allowed it to bleed all over again.

But, _perhaps_ , she considers quietly as she watches Hecate, an open, bleeding, wounded heart that can heal is better than a closed, hard, dead heart that can’t hold love.

* * *

“You wore white for thirty days.” Hecate’s lips press into a thin line after the words leave her mouth.

Pippa looks at her in the light streaming through the trees. Hecate is beautiful. She’s always known that, but that knowledge feels much more intimate in the secluded copse of trees they’ve hidden themselves away in.

They’re readjusting from their estrangement and the process is painful in the way that growing things hurt: aching at the joints but also strengthening at the weak places.

Pippa hasn’t asked why Hecate pulled away from her. She isn’t sure she has to anymore. She sees it in every angle of Hecate’s face. She sees it in every look. She sees it in every one of their interactions.

Pippa knows she can answer Hecate’s question with things she knows Hecate already knows. She can say Chinese emperors wrapped themselves in white for months to mourn their dead. She can say that Middle Eastern princes conducted funeral processions dressed in white from head to toe. She can say European monarchs attended their dead in white.

“My grandmother wore white for months when my grandfather didn’t come home from the Great War.” And that is much more telling, Pippa thinks.

Hecate’s eyes are intense on Pippa’s face. Pippa can see her swallow and open and close her mouth to speak several times.

Pippa waits.

“There’s so much brokenness in me, Pippa,” Hecate whispers, her eyes on the clouds. Unwilling or unable to face her while she confesses. There’s no fluctuation in the sentence. Hecate says it like its fact. Pippa scratches at the tightness in her chest. She hates that the thought has been so ingrained in Hecate that she states it so casually. “I don’t want to ruin you.”

Pippa wants to laugh. “Too late.” Hecate’s eyes look pained at the words. Pippa shakes her head and moves closer to Hecate. She takes one of Hecate’s hands and places it over her heart. Hecate trembles. “This isn’t ruining me. And, if you could, it would only be because I gave you permission.” She releases Hecate but her eyes watch every movement and all that’s she’s saying without words.

“Don’t forgive me.” Hecate twists her hands. Her head is bowed and her shoulders scrunch inwards, hiding herself, drawing in on herself. She doesn’t meet Pippa’s gaze. “I don’t know what to do with forgiveness.”

“Oh, Hiccup.” _I already have_ …Pippa’s whole being aches with the wanting to erase Hecate’s pain. She takes Hecate’s hands and presses closer until their foreheads are pressed together. “I’ll teach you.” She presses swift kisses to each cheek. “I’ll teach you that forgiveness is easy—” Pippa cups Hecate’s face between her hands “—that loving is easier still.”

Hecate nods slowly her breath spilling over Pippa’s lips.

And this, this, is what love looks like:

Warm smiles and warmer eyes. Tangled hands and kiss bruised lips. Short moments with long words. Long conversations with no words. Forgiveness. Acceptance. Open, soft hearts.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone interested, I finally joined the world of tumblr. You can check it out at winteranc156@tumblr.com.


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